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On Tuesday, Microsoft made two big announcements related to its Windows Azure cloud computing platform. First, the company is making its infrastructure as a service (IaaS) generally available. The move signifies that Azure is moving from its origins as a cloud development platform to a more full-featured enterprise cloud service provider.

In addition, Microsoft announced that it will "match Amazon Web Services prices for commodity services, such as compute, storage and bandwidth." That price match includes the new IaaS. Industry watchers have noted that this new pricing plan essentially turns cloud computing into a commodity.